In The Business of Education, Elizabeth Tandy Shermer shows that US colleges and universities have always had to hustle to limit expenses while aggressively competing for donations, business contracts, federal grants, state allocations, and students willing and able to pay tuition.

Through an exploration of ostensibly race- and gender-neutral policy approaches to alleviate patriarchal anxieties, H. Howell Williams reveals that political advocates’ efforts to regulate fatherhood were really attempts to bolster White American patriarchy and protect its dominance.

The Problem with Primary Voters uses state voter files to show how and why US primary voters are unrepresentative of the electorate. The authors argue that low and inconsistent primary turnout makes it difficult for politicians to represent the voters and they advocate for a national primary day to increase democratic participation.

Andrew Morris tells the story of how Hurricane Camille, which struck the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1969, changed the way the nation responded to disasters—drawing civil rights activists, conservative white southerners, liberal Congressional Democrats, and President Richard Nixon into a reconfiguration of the nation’s disaster policy.

Black Excellence offers a provocative new history of modern black liberalism by situating the seemingly conservative tendencies of black elected officials in the post–civil rights era within neoliberal American politics and an enduring black liberal tradition.

Zachary Albert explores how elected officials, think tanks, and interest groups form partisan policy networks to forward their agendas. He argues that policy research is not objective and is heavily influenced by partisan and ideological incentives, impacting policy outcomes and undermining democratic representation.

In Divided Unions, Alexis N. Walker argues that excluding public sector workers from the foundation of U.S. labor law, the Wagner Act of 1935, created divisions within the labor movement that have had lasting consequences for the size, strength, and influence of organized labor in American politics.

Migrant Citizenship examines the Farm Security Administration's Migratory Labor Camp Program and its impact on diverse farmworker families across the United States. Verónica Martínez-Matsuda reveals how these camps operated beyond their economic function, helping migrants secure their full political and social participation as citizens.

The Maternalists explores how mid-twentieth-century British psychoanalysis created a new mother-centered culture, which after 1945 would shape dramatically both welfare ideology and the British welfare state itself.